


trying to heal a burn victim by drowning them

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Series: Love and Other Fairytales [12]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Oblivious Roman, RECKLESS roman, another flashback sorry, everybody used to talk about their feelings wasnt it so nice, it had to be done, oh roman, you fucked up big time my dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 06:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: Oh, RomanWhat did youdo?





	trying to heal a burn victim by drowning them

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Rigged Game by Dylan Garity

_Fall, 2 years before Virgil wakes_

“Patton’s here, and if the racket he’s makin’ means anything, he’s in a hurry! Get a move on before I get a mind to put a hole in his damn gas tank,”

Inwardly, Roman thought that Patton probably wasn’t meaning to rush him. He was the first in their grade to get his license, and he’d only had it – and his father’s old truck – for about two weeks. His excitement had yet to cool.

Regardless, Roman gave him an exasperated expression as he hopped into the passenger seat.

“Do we have crows on the roof?” he teased, “Trying to save me from an early death?”

Patton had the decency to look sheepish.

“Sorry,” he said, “Your gramma wasn’t too annoyed, was she?”

Roman scoffed and waved his hand.

“No worries, Glad Hatter, she likes you better than me anyway,”

“ _Oh_ , you goof, you know that’s not true,” said Patton. He pulled carefully out of the driveway onto the dirt road that led from Roman’s house back into town.

Roman flicked through the radio. This far out in the middle of nowhere they didn’t get a lot of channels, and the channels they did get were sometimes… weird.

“What on God’s green earth is  _that_?” Roman laughed at the shriek that was now coming out of the tinny speakers.

Patton, who had started laughing the second it came on, shook his head. “Polka, I think?”

“Yeah, sure, if polka was played exclusively on hand saws and sung in archaic Latin by something that would make Lovecraft roll over in his grave,”

Patton, still losing it, waved desperately for Roman to click off the… well, it wasn’t  _music_ , and Roman would absolutely argue the point if he had to.

Roman did and Patton tried to catch his breath.

“I think the radio tower is just in one of those moods this week,” he said through his giggles, “My pop found a station the other day that only played animal sounds. The goats were so confused,”

“Aw, you should have called me!” said Roman, “I could have brought Dizzy!”

“Your lovely little kitty,” said Patton sternly, “Does not like our goats very much,”

“That was one time! And Dizzy was very sorry,”

“Once was enough!” said Patton, and he was trying very hard to sound firm but he was still grinning, “They still run every time they see her!”

Roman would have argued the point, but they’d arrived at Logan’s house. And Roman knew perfectly well who’s side Logan was almost certainly going to take.

Patton pulled into the street parking, his lip caught between his teeth as he chewed it in concentration. When he’d successfully parallel parked, he let out a small but enthusiastic cheer.

“I am baffled,” said Roman seriously.

“By what?”

“Your complete inability to be anything but impossibly adorable at all times,”

Patton rolled his eyes, his cheeks turning slightly pink.

“You don’t haveta poke fun,” he said. His smile had turned a little nervous.

Ribbing was a fairly natural part of Roman’s relationships, so it was a little strange to be struck with the sense that he… he really didn’t want Patton to think he was joking, all of a sudden.

“Hey, Sweetie Bird, don’t be silly,” Roman said, reaching for Patton’s hand on the wheel and squeezing. “You’re the cutest person I know!”

Patton giggled a little, and elected to slide across the bench seat and climb out of the passenger side with Roman so they didn’t have to let go. Roman let out an involuntary giggle of his own.

The laughter didn’t last long.

As they approached the door, voices became audible –  _raised_ voices, which was  _very_  odd. Roman didn’t think he’d ever heard anybody shout in the Sanders household.

Before they could quite make it to the door, it slammed open. Logan was scowling, but his expression turned quickly to surprise.

“Oh, um-”

“You can’t just stomp off because you don’t-” Thomas also cut himself off when he saw the two of them.

He huffed, though he looked more frustrated than truly furious as Logan had, shaking his head.

“Maybe you two could explain to Berry that he can’t talk his way out of people caring about him; goodness knows he’s not listening to me,”

“You’re being  _deliberately_   _reductive-”_

But Thomas just shut the door, not quite slamming it but certainly firmer than he normally did.

Logan made a strangled, inarticulate noise of frustration and stomped past them towards the truck.

Patton and Roman exchanged anxious looks.

Thomas and Logan argued all the time, but it was usually about normal brother things – stealing each others stuff, snoring, hogging all the hot water. Whatever this was sounded significantly heavier.

Quietly, they climbed in after him.

“Hey, Grump Golightly, wanna explain that?”

Logan closed his eyes and inhaled very deeply.

“You know the ACT is coming up,”

“In like a year, and you are the only sophomore who cares, but yes, go on” Roman replied. Patton pulled out into the road.

“Well, Thomas and I decided to make list of the colleges we were interested in, and mark the necessary scores,”

He seemed too frustrated to continue.

“I’m still not seeing the problem,”

“ _Thomas_ ,” Logan spat, “Selected only online schools,”

Roman winced.

Nobody really liked to bring up Logan’s – well, imprisonment was probably the closest term. Logan  _loathed_  discussing it  – Roman only knew it had something to do with his fae mother. Logan wouldn’t offer any other information, about her or the trap, and Roman only knew enough about either to understand that Logan utterly despised her.

“I mean- if that’s what he  _wants_ -” said Patton hesitantly.

“It’s not what he wants, it’s what he thinks I want!” Logan snapped. “It makes no logical  _sense._  He could go anywhere. He should not limit himself to this stupid phantasmagorical town forever because he has a supernatural  _leech_  for a brother-”

The truck screeched to a halt.

Roman and Logan both looked, alarmed, to the driver’s seat.

Patton looked deceptively undisturbed, and after the initial sudden halt, he calmly pulled into the nearest empty spot on main street and killed the engine.

“That was not a very nice thing to say about our best friend, Logan,” he said quietly.

Logan looked equally sheepish and defiant.

“I will concede that it was unnecessarily self-deprecating,” Logan said, “But it is not entirely inaccurate. Thomas is not bound to this place by anything but his own overzealous sentimentality,”

“Everybody comes back anyway, Logan,” Roman reasoned, “You know nobody gets out of Wickhills,”

“I can not see how that leads him to arrive at the conclusion that he should not even  _attempt_  it,”

“Well, what would be the point?”

“To spend time in the real world!” Logan exclaimed, “To go to a school that doesn’t have required folklore and wilderness survival courses, to drive in streets that don’t change themselves around every other week, to live in a landscape that is not  _actively attempting to murder us_  a significant portion of the time. The reasons are practically innumerable,”

Patton tapped carefully on the steering wheel.

“Logan, it- it doesn’t really seem… it doesn’t sound like you want Thomas to leave,”

“Of course I-”

“It sounds like  _you_  want to leave,” Patton finished gently.

Logan’s mouth shut.

“There is little point in discussing such a thing,” said Logan, and his voice was smaller than Roman had ever heard it.

“But what I’m saying,” said Patton, “Is that you can’t- if Thomas wants to stay, you can’t make him leave because you wish  _you_ could,”

“And…” Roman hesitated, “Have you considered that Thomas might be afraid?”

“ _Afraid?”_  said Logan incredulously.

Roman shrugged.

“Well maybe not  _afraid,_ ” Roman corrected, “more like… I mean, he’s never been away from you for longer than a day, right? There’s plenty of space in your house for you to have separate rooms, but you share. You toss and turn if you spend the night anywhere else because you can’t sleep if you can’t hear him,” Roman shrugged, “This isn’t even a little bit out of character,”

Logan looked like that genuinely had not occurred to him.

“I suppose…” he said tentatively.

“And I think if you thought it through for longer than five seconds you’d probably hate the idea just as much as he does,”

Logan’s answering silence made Roman feel a little bit smug.

“… Fine,” Logan conceded grudgingly, “I can see the reasoning behind your conclusions is sound,”

“That  _is_  what friends are for, Peter Pouter,”

“I highly doubt that is the evolutionary purpose of friendship. More likely-”

And, he was off.

Patton and Roman exchanged fond glances around Logan, who was well on his way to a full blown info-dump. Patton pulled back onto the road, and by the time they made it to the diner Logan had moved on from human’s aggressive pack-bonding instincts to listing the adaptations that lent themselves to pursuit predation.

Logan paused in order to give them all time to get out of the truck. Roman couldn’t help but smile and tap Logan on the arm. When Roman had his attention, he directed it at Patton, who, oldest of them he may be, was also the smallest, and looked incredibly amusing hopping out of the truck.

Patton saw them giggling and crossed his arms, stern.

“Oh, just see if I smuggle you any of my mama’s goat cheese, Mr. Lactose Intolerant,”

Roman followed him towards the door, pressing a hand to his chest with a wounded scoff.

“But  _Patton_ , you know she won’t give me any!”

“The shelf’s just too high for me, Roman,” Patton said innocently.

Roman cackled, holding the door open for the two of them.

Except Logan wasn’t behind him like he’d thought.

Roman looked back, where Logan had his back to them, staring towards the end of the road.

Out of town.

Something uncomfortably heavy settled in Roman’s chest.

“Hey, Specs, you good?” he called gently.

Logan startled, turning back.

“I- yes. Forgive me, I was… lost in thought,”

He hurried to the door.

Patton laid a hand on his arm, stopping him before he could brush past.

“Are you sure?” he said.

Logan shrugged, and then he offered them a brittle smile.

“There is no use in complaining about it,” he said, “I can not leave, regardless. I would rather not continue to dwell on it, if it is the same to you,”

Patton wilted.

“Yeah, that- that makes sense. I won’t bring it up again,”

They didn’t, and by the time the food arrived at the table Logan was back to his usual blunt self. But Roman couldn’t seem to shake the after-image burnt into his eyes – Logan, staring forlornly out of a town he was never going to be free of.

It… hurt, a  _lot,_  in a way Roman didn’t really know how to articulate. If there had been something he could stab, it would be easy – but no matter how much of his life he’d spent besting fae, Roman had a feeling he wouldn’t win  _that_  one. This was definitely something he couldn’t fight.

Roman kept eating, and if he was blinking a little bit more than normal, nobody seemed to notice.

* * *

When Roman walked back into his house, he made a beeline for the kitchen.

They had  _babies_  this year.

“Hello, hello!” he cooed into the incubator. The eggs, of course, did not respond, but Roman figured the same sort of principles applied to chicks as to human babies, right?

They didn’t have their own rooster – Mamaw hated the racket they made, and between how vicious the hens already were on their own and Jax spending most of his time perched ominously on their roof, looking like the avian version of the grim reaper, they didn’t need the protection.

But no rooster meant no fertilized eggs – buying them from someone who did have a rooster and making them a nice little box in the kitchen was the next best thing.

Both him and Mamaw knew that it would be much simpler to buy the chicks already hatched from the tractor supply, and both of them also knew they weren’t going to admit just how much they delighted in watching the little things hatch.

“Oh, sure, now yer nice to ‘em,” Mamaw said, ladling boiling water over the mason jars in her pot – she looked about half done with canning the first batch of apples, “And then they’ll get big and stop puttin’ up with yer shit and it’ll be ‘demons’ this, and ‘monsters’ that,”

“Everybody knows the older you get the more evil you become – look at you,”

“What’s ‘at? You wanna clean the kitchen when I’m done? Well, I’d love to have a break, knock yerself out,”

Roman rolled his eyes. Like he wasn’t already planning on cleaning the kitchen.

He opened the freezer and retrieved his water bottle, maneuvering around Mamaw to get to the sink and fill it. It was an uncomfortably hot day, especially for this late in the fall. He drank.

“How’d yer date go?”

A spray of water came out of Roman’s nose.

Mamaw smirked, offering him the washcloth that was already laying on the counter. She’d clearly waited for the perfect moment to ask just to be funny.

“It-” Roman coughed several more times, “It wasn’t a  _date_!”

She rolled her eyes.

“Sure, sure,”

“I’m serious, Mamaw, it wasn’t, I- for goodness sake, it was Logan and Patton!”

Her smile turned a touch confused.

“I know?”

Roman sputtered incoherently.

“You can’t- that’s not- It doesn’t work like that!”

Her smile dropped entirely.

She set down her ladle and stepped forward, her face deadly serious.

“Roman,” she said, firm, “Baby, ya do know- O’course I don’t  _care_ , Roman, I’d  _never_ ,”

“Care about- Mamaw, what the  _hell are you talking about?_ ”

They both stared at each other, equally baffled.

She squinted.

“You serious?”

“Serious about having no earthly idea what you’re on about,  _yeah_ , I’m pretty damn serious!”

Mamaw pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered, absolutely mutinous.

“Lord, I pray for patience, ‘cuz if I pray for strength I’ll just beat the boy to death,”

“ _Hey!_ ”

“Never you mind, then,” she said, waving her hand insistently, and Roman’s confusion ratcheted up even higher when he realized she actually looked  _embarrassed_ , “I can’t deal with this shit, go feed the chickens before I lose my damn mind,”

“It’s like three in the afternoon!”

“Don’t argue with me, just feed the birds!”

Throwing up his hands in frustration, Roman walked out.

He grabbed the sack of feed from next to the front door and starting making his way around the house. The hens saw him coming and went absolutely bonkers – it was hours earlier than they usually got fed.

Roman set the feed down and started fiddling with the latch.

It needed replaced,  _bad._  The joint was so rusted that just getting it open was becoming a production. They definitely had to do it soon, before it got cold on top of that and the stupid thing was absolutely impossible to use.

Frustrated, Roman pounded it with the side of his fist, and  _instantly_ regretted it.

The metal slashed open his hand and he yelped at the sudden sting. He turned his hand and  _wow_  okay that was actually a lot of blood.

Cradling his bleeding hand with his other and holding it up above his shoulders, he hurried back into the house.

“Uh, Mamaw, I could use some help!”

They got his hand under the faucet and Mamaw wrapped it in cotton bandages.

“Gonna have to go to the actual hospital for once,” she said, “Gonna need a tetanus shot. What the hell were ya tryna do?”

“Nothing, I just- I just got mad,” he grumbled.

She rolled her eyes.

“Ya  _do_  know punching isn’t the solution to every problem?”

“Yes!” Roman scoffed indignantly.

“I mean it,” she said, patting his face. “I know we pick, but yer not  _dumb,_ Roman. Use yer head once in a while. Ya can’t fist-fight every problem, but ya can definitely think yer way outta most of ‘em,”

She moved away, starting to clear up the canning supplies. She obviously intended to head to the hospital now.

Roman mulled over her words.

_A problem he couldn’t fight._

Maybe… maybe not fighting  _was_  the solution.

And just like that, Roman had a plan.

* * *

Salvage garden had a whole derelict bin in the corner full of things no sane person in Wickhills would buy – basically anything made of hawthorn or ash wood. It was simple enough to pick through it and find a hawthorn box in big enough dimensions.

Roman filled it carefully, over the course of a month – Thyme and a hag stone, so he would see clearly. Shamrocks for luck, heather and rose buds to draw their attention. Gold coins. Some fancy candy. A handful of novelty fireworks.

He could do this. He just had to use his head. He just had to think it through.

He waited -  not a full moon, that would be suicide, but as close as he could reasonably get. He wore his hunting clothes, and in her attempts to not glare at him for going out so close to a revel, Mamaw didn’t notice that he was wearing sneakers instead of steel toed boots, or that he didn’t have his dagger at all.

It took ages to walk around town rather than through it, but he couldn’t risk anyone seeing him. He had the distinct feeling nobody was going to have much faith in this plan.

Once on the other side of town, he followed the train tracks until he saw it.

The hanging tree may or may not have  _actually_  been a hanging tree. Nobody could seem to agree on where Wickhills had done it’s capital punishment. But whether it was or not, it definitely had become an entirely different kind of hanging tree.

Tied to the branches were dozens of scraps of fabric, in a myriad of colors and materials. Clothes from everyone who had ever tried to get something from the fae, and lost more than they’d ever thought to barter.

But Roman wasn’t here for himself – he wasn’t being greedy. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

The wind sent the torn ribbons of clothing fluttering and a shiver down Roman’s spine. The late fall chill was seeping into his clothes, the air smooth, cool and damp.

Reaching into his pocket, Roman pulled out the long red strip, carefully cut from the hem of one of his shirts. His hands shaking, he gently pulled down a branch and tied the fabric around it.

“I’m here to barter for the changeling boy’s freedom,” he said, concentrating everything he had on keeping his voice steady. He set the box on the ground in front of him, sat down, and waited.

Roman wasn’t sure how long he sat there. He might have fallen asleep, or else the fae who arrived was some kind of teleporter; it seemed like Roman blinked and there he was, sitting casually across from him with a hood pulled up over his head and a sly grin on his face.

Roman tried to stay calm.

“I was looking to speak with his mother,” he said neutrally.

“Tough,” said the fae, “I’m as good as you’re going to get. Talk,”

Roman focused on staying still, keeping his voice steady and his hands from fidgeting.

“I want him to be able to go to college,”

“And what do you have to offer for such a thing?”

_You can’t fight every problem_.

“I’ll stop hunting the fae in the forest,”

The fae boy tilted his head, considering.

He shrugged.

“Not good enough,”

Roman sputtered before he could stop himself.

“What do I care how many solitaries you kill?” the fae said, “The woods are full of them. No skin off my back. I think you have a tendency to overestimate your own importance,”

Roman felt his face flush, mortified.

“So no, not enough. Let’s see…,” he tapped the box thoughtfully. “The changeling’s fairly smart, isn’t he? If given a chance to go to this college he could be there, what, six years? Seven?”

“I- yeah?” said Roman hesitantly.

“So, how about seven years?”

“What?”

“Seven years for seven years would be a fair trade, don’t you think?” said the fae, “Seven years of your life, and your friend goes to college,”

“My  _life?”_

“ _Oh,_ don’t be so dramatic,” scoffed the fae. “I know how long a human lives, you could make it to eighty, easily. What’s seven fewer? That’s less than a tenth,”

Roman paused. That… that made sense, actually, but… but he’d had a  _plan_ , and he was incredibly nervous about the idea of deviating from the plan.

He hesitated, and the fae sighed.

“Listen,” he said, leaning in, almost conspiratorially. Roman felt himself ducking forward to listen automatically.

“I’m… this is as good a deal as you’re going to get. No one else will barter with you. And I- don’t  _tell_ anyone,” he lowered his voice, like he was a little embarrassed. “But I do genuinely want your friend to go to college. I mean, can you imagine the look on his face?”

Roman could. Easily.

The fae smiled under his hood.

“Seven years of your life, and the changeling goes to college. Do we have a deal?”

Roman took a deep breath.

Before he could lose his nerve, he shoved his hand forward.

The fae grinned, reaching out and grabbing it.

But he didn’t shake it – instead he yanked, hard, and Roman fell forward. Before he could protest the fae had grabbed the hair at the base of Roman’s neck and dragged him into a blunt, bruising kiss.

Roman tried to pull back, but the fae was much stronger than him and seemed determined to keep him still. Roman flinched in his grip and felt the rip of several hairs being torn out. His skin crawled and his shoulders were tense, as the fae… it seemed almost like he  _breathed_  something into him.

And then he pulled back, but didn’t let go, so Roman’s face was still inches from his. And this close, Roman could see past the shadows cast by the cloak, and got a good look at the fae’s face.

The Serpent King’s face.

Roman flung himself backwards, and this time the Serpent King let him go, laughing.

“Oh, don’t look so scared. I really thought we were getting along here,”

Roman couldn’t talk – instead his voice came out as a terrified squeak.

The Serpent King rolled his eyes, standing and brushing the legs of his pants.

“Do you need help up?” he said, voice slightly mocking, offering his hand, “I promise not to kiss you this time,”

Roman ignored the hand, scrambling to his feet, stomach roiling with dread. He’d fucked up. He’d absolutely, spectacularly fucked up.

“Be ready,” said the Serpent King casually, “I haven’t quite decided when I’m coming to get you yet,”

Roman’s throat was clogging, panicked.

“But-! You said- off the end?”

“Hmm, did I say that?” said the Serpent King, “No, I think the agreed upon deal was just seven years for the changeling going to college. We did shake on it, if you remember,”

Roman could feel tears threatening in his eyes.

“You tricked me,” he said, but instead of sounding furious, or even indignant, his voice was small and absolutely petrified. Like a child, like a kid shoved into the dirt on a playground.

“Only because you made it so easy, darling,”

The Serpent King reached out towards his face and Roman cringed away from the finger he drew down his cheek.

“Cheer up,” he said sweetly, “I’ll see you soon,”

And then Roman was alone, surrounded by the sounds of night and his own thundering heartbeat.

Pressing a hand to his chest, he wondered how many it had left.

* * *

Roman knew they could tell something was wrong. But every time Roman thought about saying anything, his vision flashed with images of their disappointed, horrified faces and the words clawed back down his throat, choking him.

Instead, Roman threw himself into figuring out how to get Logan out of town.

That was another thing Roman hadn’t thought through – because he was an idiot, because he didn’t think  _anything_  through, because he got it in his head to be the hero and instead fucked everything up hell and back – Logan hadn’t even  _tried_ to step out of Wickhills in years. He didn’t see the point. And there was no way Roman could push him towards it in the “spirit of scientific experimentation” without Logan questioning how Roman knew it would work this time.

Roman might have ruined his own life, be he’d be damned if it was going to be for nothing.

Roman was in the middle seat of Patton’s truck, trying not to fidget or squirm and give away his rampant anxiety. When Logan, unprompted, slid closer on the bench and pressed the side of their legs together, Roman knew he’d failed spectacularly.

A little light tinged on in the dashboard and Patton wrinkled his nose, a picture of adorable frustration.

“Darn it! This truck uses so much  _gas,_  gosh,”

Roman seized his opportunity.

“Can we go to the gas station by my house?” he said, “They have that deli with the potato salad,”

Patton cocked his head.

“I don’t think we’d make it? It’s on the other side of town, Roman,”

“Well, yeah, but Logan’s with us,” he said, and tried not wince when Logan tensed beside him. “Just go out and we’ll pop back up on the other side,”

Patton actually looked downright pissed that Roman would even suggest such a thing, but Logan cut him off before he could do any reprimanding.

“It may as well be used for efficiency purposes,” said Logan, “Better to get some kind of use out of it at all, I suppose,”

Patton glared at Roman, mutinous, but he did continue down main street, past the last houses and into the wooded hills.

Roman held his breath.

He’d never been in a car with Logan when this happened, so he didn’t know what he was looking for – or rather, what was supposed to  _not_  happen. But he did notice when Logan began to tense up and look around himself in alarm.

“Where are we?” he said.

Patton glanced nervously over at him.

“I- just the forest? You know it all looks the same to me from the inside,”

Up ahead, the was a break in the treeline and Logan relaxed minutely. Roman did no such thing.

And when they pulled into an entirely unfamiliar gas station. Logan practically launched out of the car.

“ _Where are we?”_

Patton looked nearly as alarmed as Logan did, but his was rapidly morphing into astonishment.

“Uh- Nelsonville, I think?” he said hesitantly, looking around them.

Logan bolted for the gas station. Patton yelped in alarm and they both chased after him.

“What town is this?” Logan demanded, throwing open the door.

The kid behind the counter, a little older than them, scowled at Logan’s short tone.

“We ain’t in town. Closest is Haydenville,”

“Not Wickhills?” Logan pressed.

The clerk snorted.

“You’re lost as hell, man, Wickhills is near Marietta. It’s like three counties over from here,”

There was a moment of tense silence, and then Logan swayed slightly.

Roman and Patton crowded behind him, hands on his shoulders.

“It’s a trick,” said Logan flatly, “It’s some kind of- She wouldn’t have-”

“Uh, are you okay?” said the clerk, clearly alarmed.

“Maybe- maybe she felt bad,” said Patton encouragingly, “Maybe she changed her mind,”

Logan didn’t look happy, but he didn’t really seem upset either. He was staring out the glass door of the gas station with an uncharacteristically…  _lost_  expression on his face.

“I… I suppose it is…  _possible_ , but-”

“This is a good thing, isn’t it?” Roman blurted.

Logan looked at him, confused and almost afraid.

“Somehow,” he said quietly, “I very much doubt it,”

* * *

What Logan lacked in enthusiasm for his new-found freedom, his brother and parents made up for ten fold. Mr. Sanders went all the way to Nelsonville for groceries three times in the next week, and took Logan with him every time. Thomas, in an uncharacteristic display of enthusiasm for the outdoors, dragged Logan, Roman, Patton, and a half-dozen other people to Tar Hollow to go hiking. He’d lost his excitement pretty quickly once they’d actually  _started_ hiking, but Logan’s hesitant comment that it was nice to go for a walk without worrying they might die horribly had made him absolutely beam.

Patton was equally delighted, and nearly doubled the mileage he’d put on the truck since he got it. Roman was terrified of what he’d done, but it was hard not to still be proud of himself. Logan was cautious, sure he was being fooled somehow, but he seemed to relax a bit more every time he left successfully.

Today Patton had decided they needed to see a movie, since Wickhills didn’t have a cinema – and they’d come out of town right on top of Athens, which had two.

But driving across the bridge of the Hocking, the campus of Ohio University was splayed out across the river valley, a hodgepodge of modern buildings and crumbling, hundred-year-old stone. It wasn’t hard to change the itinerary after seeing Logan’s face.

If Roman had known, he would have done more. He’d never be quite sure  _what –_  sat in on a lecture or something, taken a physics professor hostage, or even just spent a longer time in the huge, sprawling library.  

But then again, if he’d known, he never would have done this to Logan in the first place, would he?

There was no indication of anything being wrong when they got back. It wasn’t until the next evening that Roman got the call.

“Roman?” came a familiar voice.

“Logan?”

“Uh- no, it’s… it’s Thomas,”

Roman pulled up short. He’d never heard Thomas so subdued.

“Do you think you could come over? I’m gonna call Patton and ask if he can pick you up,”

“What’s wrong?”

The long silence on the other end of the phone made Roman’s heart clench, a prickle of anxiety creeping up his spine.

“We tried to… we were gonna go to the roller rink,” Thomas said quietly.

A chunk of cement had taken up residence in Roman’s throat.

“I…” Thomas drew in a shaky breath that hissed over the line, “You know him, he’s… he’s being  _logical_  about it but I just… I really think he needs a slumber party,”

Roman mumbled through the rest of the conversation on autopilot, and when the line clicked off he stared at the phone in his hand, fist clenched around the spiraling cord.

“Roman?”

He had no idea what his face must look like – but he tilted his head head up and Mamaw instantly set down the rag in her hands.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“Logan can’t leave,” he said, and his voice was flat and colorless.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I thought-”

“They tried to go to the roller rink and they just looped back again. Just like before,”

And now,  _now_  Roman finally understood.

_Can you imagine the look on his face?_

Roman could. So easily.

Logan had gone to college – just once. And now he’d never leave again. He’d been given the briefest glimpse of something he’d wanted his whole life and then had it snatched out of his reach.

And it was all Roman’s fault.

* * *

It didn’t matter that Logan wasn’t crying when they entered the Sanders’ living room – every surface padded with dozens of pillows and blankets in a nest of truly epic proportions – or that he seemed entirely unconcerned with the situation. Roman was pretty sure Patton had long ago made it his mission to cry enough for all of them combined.

“You are all making a fuss over something that is functionally irrelevant,” said Logan, “There is no measurable difference between now and my previous situation,”

But Roman caught on “functionally,” on “measurable,” words Logan used because they were concrete and quantifiable, because emotions  _weren’t_  – easier to lie about how you were feeling when you cut feelings out of the equation period.

Logan firmly shut down any attempts to discuss it – instead the night was devoted to watching his favorite movies, and Logan making a big show of exasperatedly sighing every time someone gave him unsolicited affection. But he didn’t push off Patton, curled against his side with his head on Logan’s chest, or Thomas, his head on Logan’s shoulder. He didn’t release his white-knuckled grip on Roman’s hand.

Eventually they’d migrated into lying positions, and the room had gone quiet, the blue light of the TV’s menu screen casting twilight-shadows over them. Roman tried to sleep but he was too focused on keeping his breath steady around the twisted knot of brambles in his throat, his hand from shaking in Logan’s grip, his chest from caving in with the weight of his guilt.

Which meant when Logan’s even breaths hitched, shallowed, and turned into muffled, bitten off sobs, Roman was wide awake.

He didn’t move.

If Logan had known how badly it went this time, Roman figured he’d never want Roman’s help again anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> now you know
> 
> you can also find me on [ tumblr ](%E2%80%9Dtulipscomeinallsortsofcolors.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)


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